


not playing by the rules we played the game of loss

by kimaracretak



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death Fix, Dreams and Nightmares, F/F, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 13:27:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15316476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: Alex and Astra plan to fake Astra's death to let her defect and find a way to stop Myriad. When things go sideways, the recovery is harder than either of them expected.





	not playing by the rules we played the game of loss

**Author's Note:**

> _Not playing by the rules_  
>  _We played the game of loss_  
>  I'll keep on writing to the angels so you're safe 'til the moment we meet again  
> — 'Song for Jolee', Kamelot
> 
> Canon-divergent from the end of season 1. Started in 2016 (like, long enough ago that we didn't have a canon first name for Vasquez, and no I didn't change her first name here bc I like the name I gave her), finished for [wipbigbang2018](https://wipbigbang.dreamwidth.org/). Beautiful cover art by paynesgrey [here](https://paynesgrey-art.dreamwidth.org/6844.html).

Pull me out of the dark  
Into your stars  
Into your sky  
— 'Green and Cream', Guilt Machine

 

* * *

 

Alex has seen a lot of terrible things during her time with the DEO. Most of them involve walking into scenes of total disaster and seeing her sister — costume singed or face bruised, smeared with dust or with bits of concrete stuck in her hair but always _always_ her little sister — standing in the middle of the worst of it. She's killed people, seen friends die and is never ever going to get the image of Kara falling in battle for the first time out of her head.

But this ... standing on the rooftop watching Kara sob over her aunt's body like the world is ending ( _it is_ , she recognises numbly in a part of her that she doesn't want to, _can't_ look at too closely right now, _her world's ending for the second time today because I keep tearing it away from her_ ), this might just be the worst.

Alex steps back far enough to give them privacy but she doesn't look away, and she doesn't need to hear the words to understand the pain in Kara's tears falling down to soak Astra's uniform, Astra's hands trembling against Kara's cheeks. She sways unsteadily on her feet, feels J'onn's presence beside her just as heavy as the sword strapped across her back and far more confusing.

She rips her gaze away just in time to see tiny blue lights speeding through the sky towards them. Blue lights that can't possibly belong to a DEO chopper. "Kara," she says, voice nearly lost in the bite of the wind and the drone of Non's approaching army. "Kara, come on, we have to go."

Kara stands up, Astra's limp form cradled in her arms, and Alex is struck by how gently she holds her now, how far they've come from the day Kara dragged her aunt into the DEO and left her on the concrete without a backward glance. They haven't come nearly far enough. "She's still breathing," Kara says, loud enough for Alex to hear. "I'm not leaving her to die without someone she loves."

And she doesn't mean it to hurt, and Alex hadn't thought anything about this night could hurt more, except now she feels like _she's_ the one who's been stabbed.

"Super — Kara, _wait_." J'onn takes half a step forward, but Kara's gone before he's gotten even half a word out, so fast that Alex hadn't even seen her bend her knees in preparation to take off.

"Sir," Alex calls. She has so many things she wants to ask, to explain, things like _it wasn't supposed to be like this_ and _we had a plan_ and _why, why couldn't you have given me just thirty more seconds_ and _how long do you think I can lie to Kara about this_ , so many things clamouring for attention that she can't give them as the Kryptonians draw closer. "Sir, you need to trust her, and we need to get out of here, _now_." She means Kara, or maybe even Astra, but between the confusion and the adrenaline all she can feel is exhaustion.

When he turns to face her, he looks the closest thing she's ever seen him be to frightened. "Alex..."

But she shakes her head, ignores his outstretched hand as they run for the chopper.

*

They spend the flight back in silence, even though every look J'onn gives her says _we need to talk_ louder than any words could. It's almost acceptable, here, with the blades whirling above them and the static chatter over the radio doing an admirable job of keeping them from drowning in the spaces where they aren't saying things like _Kara_ and _Astra_ and _why_.

Alex doesn't know what's waiting for them back at the DEO. Doesn't know what she wants to be waiting for them in the lonely sand-and-steel bunker, and that's maybe even worse.

If she had had more time, if she had gone for her knife instead of the sword or thought to make sure Astra still had her anti-kryptonite badge on, if she had just _stuck with the plan, goddamnit_ , then all four of them could be on this chopper together. Astra would be weakened and handcuffed but whole, with the possibility of another new life ahead of her; Alex would be — would be _better_ , she wants to think, anything has to be better than this sick hollow emptiness that's rapidly being filled with lies she doesn't want to try to justify telling.

But she hadn't had time, hadn't done any of that. Astra's death was supposed to be faked, supposed to give her — to give both of them — time to pause, to think, to re-evaluate the war and the strange curiosities that have been swirling around them since Astra first knelt down next to her on an abandoned warehouse floor. To let Astra recover herself and her relationship with Kara, to let Alex figure out why her first thought upon seeing Astra had faded from _enemy_ to _Kara's family, mine_.

Until Astra had wavered a little too much on the rooftop, and Alex had fallen back on instinct, and now Astra was going to die and take all those possibilities, all those beginnings with her. Was going to have them taken away from her, because of Alex.

Except ... except Astra doesn't die. She hangs on for hours after Kara's said what she was sure were her final goodbyes, long after J'onn has taken responsibility for Astra's condition and walked away. She lies still and cold, green-tinged under the harsh industrial light of the medical bay and she hangs on, every rasping breath a struggle that reminds Alex that this, too, is nothing more than another of her failures.

She couldn't protect Kara. She couldn't kill Astra. She couldn't save Astra for real. Couldn't do anything then but watch and try, can't do anything now but drink too much, keep a silent vigil by Astra's bed with a bottle of whiskey and a much louder one on Kara's couch with beer and _Homeland_ and anything that might distract her sister, anything to convince her that she made the right choice in coming back.

(Alex can't shake the memory of seeing the Black Mercy's version of Kara's family on Krypton, a family that never sent her away and never died. Can't stop thinking about how she nearly took the last remnant of that family from her just hours later. Can't move herself away from the certainty that bringing Kara back was selfish, and maybe not the right choice at all. What right does she have to protect Kara from her own dreams?)

 

***

  
The thing is, tactically, everything should have been fine.

The thing is, practically, the same collision of plans and desires and people can be forced over and over again and something different can win every time.

Kara has already cleared a path to the medical bay by the time Alex and J'onn and the rest of the agents return, already gotten Astra settled in a sunbed. Alex looks at the doctors doing their best to be inconspicuous against the walls and wonders how Kara convinced them to let her tend to Astra. Then she looks at her sister, pacing the hallway still in full Supergirl gear, eyes raw and red from a combination of heat vision and tears and angrier than Alex has ever seen her, and supposes she should just be grateful that all the doctors are still in one piece.

"Kara," Alex starts, but anything else is lost as Kara rockets into her arms at not-quite superspeed, enveloping her in hair and cape and arms that tighten close enough to make her bones _creak_.

Alex groans even as she hugs Kara back, and Kara mumbles "sorry" immediately, loosening her hold just enough that Alex can breathe again and burying her face in the crook of her neck.

"It's okay," Alex says reflexively, like she's done for twelve years every time Kara forgot about her powers and broke a chair or burned a hole in a wall. But it's not okay, because this time Kara's tears are Alex's fault, and Kara is never going to know that. Because the only other person Kara could hug like she wants, needs to in this moment might never wake up because of Alex.

" _Not_ okay," Kara wails quietly against her shoulder, and then something else that's lost in a fresh wave of tears.

Alex opens her mouth, shuts it again, settles for rubbing comforting circles across Kara's back. _Just hold on_ , she thinks numbly. _Kara, Astra, both of you, please, just keep holding on_. She presses her cheek to Kara's, realises that somewhere along the line she's started crying too. _I'm here I'm here I'm here_. She wills all the truths she wants to say but can't for fear of the truth she shouldn't say coming out as well into their hug and slowly, slowly, her sister's breathing starts to even out.

It feels like a decade has passed by the time Kara lets her go and steps back just enough to look at Alex. Alex opens her eyes in time to see J'onn, who had been hovering at the end of the corridor, start a deliberate retreat back towards his office. She's not sure if she hates him for leaving her alone with Kara and her own secrets or if she should just be glad she's not going to have to witness another fight between a Kryptonian and a Martian tonight.

"Is Astra..." She tilts her head toward the medbay windows. She has a horrible feeling she knows the answer already.

"She's not healing," Kara whispers brokenly. "Astra, she's ... nothing's happening. Shouldn't she be getting better by now?"

And there it is, the endless fields of unknowns that she and Astra had only started to map in rushed whispers that had never carried the sort of hate they by rights ought to have. _What happens to Kryptonian cells after prolonged exposure to anti-Kryptonite shielding? Who do we tell about this? How much do you have to hurt to make this convincing? What if, what if, what if...?_

She shrugs helplessly. "I don't know."

It's the only answer she can give. But as her sister sways against the wall, holding on so tightly for support that Alex can see the holes forming in the metal under her fingertips, it's the answer she least wants to give.

*

"You're really okay with letting Astra stay here?" Alex asks J'onn hours later, after she's managed to bully a couple junior agents into finding the only comfortable chair in the complex and gotten Kara settled with a blanket by her aunt's bedside. It's late — or maybe hideously early, she hasn't been able to bring herself to check her watch, doesn't know how to look at her hands without feeling the weight of the kryptonite sword in them — and there's a pleading note in her voice that she's too tired to erase.

J'onn paces his office, still restless. He'd rather be roaming the halls, Alex knows, checking in with his agents and hovering over screens, but that carries too much of a chance of running into Kara. "Not really," he sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. "But it's better she's here than with Non and her troops. At least this way we can keep an eye on her. Find out what she knows about Myriad, if she ever wakes up."

"She _will_ ," Alex says, too fast, and J'onn stops pacing, leans across his desk and gives her one of those looks that always makes her unsure exactly how much he's reigning in his Martian telepathy. _Shit_.

J'onn raises an eyebrow. "Something you want to tell me, Agent Danvers?" It's his boss voice, miles away from his almost-a-family voice, and oh god this night is a disaster that's never going to end, everyone fracturing and spiraling further and further away from her.

 _He's doing this for you_ , she reminds herself firmly. _For you and Kara, to protect what you have. What you wouldn't have if she knew what you did to Astra_. She meets his eyes, willing him to stay with her, listen to her, trust her just a little longer. "Want to tell you? No." That, at least, is true. "Should I tell you? I ... I don't know."

She's going to have to, at some point, if Astra wakes up (she will, she will), going to have to tell some version of the past few weeks that renders their relationship intelligible to J'onn and Kara. It might even be an easier story to tell than the one she and Astra are going to have to piece together for themselves.

J'onn just looks at her, and Alex realises she's half-expecting the order to tell him anyway. But it doesn't come. J'onn sinks into his chair, presses his hands against his forehead, and he looks older than Alex has seen him since he talked about the devastation of his planet. So many deaths that he's taken responsibility for, and now he's shouldering Astra as well, for her.

The guilt in her stomach grows, knots itself ever tighter.

When J'onn finally speaks, all he says is, "You're not going to listen to me if I tell you to go home and get some sleep, are you?"

"No sir." He may have softened slightly, but she respects the distance that's established itself between them anyway. Numbs herself to it. _Get used to it. You still have Kara, for now_.

"I didn't think so." Half a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth anyway, and Alex feels warm for the first time since she stepped out onto the rooftop. "Go be with your sister. And try to get rest of some sort."

"Yeah, I will," she says, and if she's probably going to find that rest at the bottom of a bottle, at least it's not really a lie.

She's almost at the door when he adds, "And — I know I'm the last person Kara wants to see right now, but I ... I need to tell her what happened at CatCo today."

Alex freezes. _What happened?_ Icy dread joins the guilt in the pit of her stomach, winds cold fingers up to her heart. CatCo had been ... strange for Kara since the Adam thing, from what little Alex had been able to gather in between dealing with Bizarro and Lord, but it was still Kara's safe place. _Had_ to still be Kara's safe place, now that Alex had ripped her away from the Black Mercy and ensured that Astra might never wake up.

"Sir?" She's not sure what her question is. She's not sure she wants to hear the answer.

"It's nothing you need to worry about. Let's just say that Cat Grant is ... not so easy to work for." The corner of his mouth twitches in something that might have thought about being a smile, before thinking the better of it. "Just ... tell her to see me before she goes back to work."

Alex runs a hand through her hair, mutters a vague assent as she leaves. Just one more thing that she, that they all have failed to protect Kara from.

Looking back at him through the glass office walls, she takes a bleak sort of comfort in the fact that everyone else is finding it just as hard to count today as a victory as she is.

 

***

 

She dreams about Astra, the first night. It's a cruel sort hope, that: the reminder of what Astra is like living, breathing, _fighting_ when she's really catatonic somewhere down the hall. It's more than Alex deserves, less than Kara deserves, and in her half-lucid state she curses the fact that she didn't have enough whiskey on the base to drink herself into dreamlessness.

Something to remember for the future, maybe, when her conscious mind takes over the hourly torture rota.

In her dreams Astra sits at the kitchen table with her, head resting on Alex's shoulder as they flip through scrapbook pages. Her hair is moving with the breeze, casting a strange floral scent unlike anything else Alex has ever know through the kitchen.

"You took care of her," Astra says, and her fingers are tender on the pages, on Alex's wrists. "You took such good care of her before I could come back."

"Yeah, well," Alex says, and reaches for the glass of wine sitting between them. Had Astra brought the wine? They were sharing, she thought, but Astra hadn't drunk anything. The bottle is still full as Alex finishes the glass. "My sister. You know."

Astra's smile is dreamy. "I had a sister. A twin. I would die for her. She wanted me to die for her."

 _That's wrong_ , Alex thinks, _that's the wrong way around_ , but the words stick in her throat. Why can't she speak?

"Would you die for you sister, Alexandra Danvers?" Astra's moved away, like maybe she needs to see Alex's eyes for this. "Would you die for Kara?"

Alex frowns. A test. Astra's testing her. "The world needs Supergirl," she says, and it isn't a yes but she isn't saying no either.

(In the memory that isn't this dream, she had yelled at Astra then. _Get out of my house_ , service pistol drawn, and Astra hadn't quite left then but it had still taken them another week to agree to their plan to end Myriad before Non could spiral any further out of control.

In the dream that isn't that memory, Alex is braver, or maybe weaker, because she doesn't move at all.)

Astra is in her lap and her mouth is full of blood that's smearing all over Alex's lips when she kisses her. "I would die for Kara. I need you to let me die for Kara, Alexandra."

There's blood on Alex's hands, so much more blood than could ever fit in Astra's mouth. When Alex pushes Astra back far enough that she can see her, really see her, all she can see is the gaping hole in her chest, green as death.

"I needed to die to be with her," Astra says. "You promised, Alex, you promised. Why did you send me somewhere I can't help her? Why do you keep taking family away from her?"

Astra's crying now, green kryptonite tears to match her blood. When Alex lifts a hand to her face it comes away wet. Blood or tears, she can't bear to look at it. "It wasn't about Kara," she says, and the words come out too slowly, like she's breathing underwater, drowning like she'd let Astra drown. "It was about us, and how you -"

But when was something in her life not about Kara?

She's a worse liar in her dreams, because Astra's face twists in a snarl and she launches herself at Alex, crashing though the table. Alex doesn't resist, hits the floor in a shower of debris that slice though her hands, bruise her shoulderblades. Astra lands on top of her, face twisted and burning nearly beyond all recognition. From her back, the point of the kryptonite sword pierces the sky, and Alex can feel the weight of the hilt in her hand.

"You should die for what you did to Kara tonight," Astra murmurs, low and intense and just a little bit proud, like she had been the first day they met in battle. "She deserves better than you. But if you did ..." She trails off. Alex stares up into her eyes, the only thing left of the ruin of her face, and tries to breathe past the weight of Astra's corpse on top of her. "If you did then she'd be alone. And that's the one thing I can never allow."

Now, Alex knows, now she's crying tears, because she can taste their salt on her lips and it's nothing like blood, nothing like Astra.

"I'm here for her," she says, because it's the only thing she can think of to stop the hurting. She reaches up to wrap her arms around Astra, intertwines their legs and presses her palms to Astra's back as if she could hold all the blood in.

She can't, not even in a dream.

"No matter how many lies?" Astra asks. "Blood makes a promise."

"She can't lose me too," Alex agrees. With her face buried in Astra's shoulder, she doesn't have to see the pain in her expression. Can concentrate on the pain running through every centimetre of her own nerve endings. "I —"

Alex blinks awake on the floor before she can finish her promise, her injured shoulder twisted uncomfortably under her body. She carefully eases herself upright, cracks open her eyes just enough to see that she'd managed to grab an entire half hour's worth of sleep. Shit.

She reaches for her water bottle with her good arm only to find that it, too had ended up on the floor. She rubs her eyes, and finds that she'd apparently managed to knock everything clear off her nightstand when she fell. The memory of Astra tackling her in her nightmare comes flooding back, and with a wince she notices the new aches making themselves known.

Alex staggers to her feet, retrieves her water and painkillers and downs three of the Advil before thinking better of it. She'd see the doctors in the morning, if she had the time and they could be spared from Astra's bedside. In the meantime, she lays back down, drags a pillow over her face, and tries to think of more pleasant things, or at least ones that will leave her better than useless by the time she has to be back on her feet.

*

_I like you._

Looking back, that was probably where this ... _thing_ , whatever it was, whatever it might have been, started. Astra in a kryptonite cell, tired and probably still lethal and somehow looking up at Alex like she was the most magical thing she had ever seen, something and someone that a lifetime of alien planets paled before.

_I like you._

People didn't, as a rule, like Alex, especially not these days. Kara loved her, of course, and J'onn must care about her in order to protect her like this, and the DEO agents respected her, even those who resented how quickly she had become their effective commander. But liking her? She'd been too strange to be liked by anyone she wanted that attention from since Kara became her sister.

_I like you._

It should have been childish, called to mind the _but do you like-like him?_ s of elementary school ( _no_ , the only true answer, _yeah, I guess_ , the answer she gave more often than not). But in Astra's mouth the words were different, a gesture of admiration from one soldier to another, a compliment for who Alex was rather than what she could do for her mother or her lab's PI or the DEO, an ... invitation, almost.

So Alex had looked at her though the glass, looked at the alien, _Kara's aunt_ , the reason she had been kidnapped and nearly died, and had wanted to hate her. What right did Astra have to sit in that cell and be anything approaching _kind_ to her? But she hadn't been able to stop herself from wondering what it would be like if Astra was telling the truth, if one day she would be able to like her too.

J'onn hadn't wanted her to talk to Astra at all, in the beginning. She's positive this wasn't what he had feared then, but she thinks that whatever had been in his head, the shape of it might not be so different.

Alex had always been good at doing things that terrified her. Usually she did them for reasons others disapproved of, reasons that they called self-destructive in whispers just loud enough for her to hear. They wanted her to hear, half the time, whether it was so she would be embarrassed or so she would stop. She never did, at least not until a man using Hank Henshaw's name dragged her out of jail and told her she could do better, and left the wanting up to her.

 _Well, here I am_ , Alex thinks. _Doing better. Saving the world. For all the good it's doing me and Kara and Astra and who knows who else_.

At the very least, when that thought follows her into sleep, it doesn't let her dream again.

 

***

 

Morning comes to the DEO headquarters with no care for the amount of sleep anyone has had, and Alex watches bleary-eyed as Kara prepares to go back to CatCo, strangely flat behind her office-appropriate pressed khaki slacks and ironed pastel button-down. She looks more alien like this than she ever did with lasers lighting up her eyes, and Alex wants to cry all over again.

"You don't ... I mean. You could just not go. Even someone like Cat has to give you bereavement leave, legally." And if she doesn't, she can answer to me, she might have said, but she still can't quite face the enormity of what she's done to Kara. What Kara doesn't know she's done.

"Don't be stupid." Kara's fingers work swiftly through her hair, the twists and pins that shape her face into something no one else will see as _Supergirl_. "Cat needs me as much as the public needs Supergirl." She pauses, and narrows her eyes at Alex so fiercely that Alex takes an involuntary step back. "And don't say _bereavement_ like she's _died_. Astra's strong. She —"

Kara breaks off, the mask splintering straight down the middle, and Alex opens her arms wordlessly, hugs her tight as if that could put anything back together.

It's unfair that this, too, should be one more thing broken past all repair. "Be careful," Alex says helplessly, for lack of anything else. "Last night was — it was just the start."

Kara laughs weakly. "Thought that was my line," she says into Alex's shoulder. "If you make me need to use super speed to fix my makeup I swear to Rao." But she doesn't make any move to leave the circle of Alex's arms.

"Are you flying back?" Alex asks, suddenly desperate to keep Kara with her as long as possible.

"I'm taking one of the trucks," Kara says, and, as if the thought has reminded her she was getting ready to leave, she pulls back, straightening her cuffs. "Drive into the city, walk the rest of the way in. I don't wanna attract more attention today than I have to."

"Oh," Alex swallows hard. "You driving, sure, that will definitely not attract attention."

The joke startles a real if brief laugh from Kara, and for a moment, Alex's heart lifts. "I've gotten better," she protests. "Astra used to — oh, Alex, take care of her."

As soon as the smile appeared it was gone again, just like Kara, who's out of the room before Alex can blink, or promise.

 _Probably for the best_ , she thinks sourly, as she heads to the control room. _Can't break promises you don't make, Danvers_.

*

Alex spends the day in more meetings than she can keep track of, all the while trying to dull the insistent drumbeat of _Astra Astra Astra_ at the back of her skull. She has to believe that Astra's in good hands with the medical team, but it doesn't make it any easier to be away.

_My problem. My problem to fix. My … person._

All Astra had wanted by the end was to be more than Non's war, and now it's so hard to think of her as anything but a wound torn through everyone's lives.

Alex skips the last meeting, one on the status of the helicopter fleet, in order to check on Astra, hoping to quell some of the guilt roiling in her stomach and, at the very least, be able to truthfully tell Kara that she's seen her aunt and there hasn't been a change. The doctors don't let her in the room, but Alex doesn't need them to in order to see that Astra hasn't moved, hasn't healed, hasn't changed. She can ache just as well with her nose pressed against the quarantine glass.

"Hey," Kara's voice at her shoulder disturbs the blank miasma of Alex's thoughts. "She hasn't changed, huh?"

Alex shakes her head mutely. Kara's forehead hits the window with a dull thud. "CatCo was fine," she says, as if Alex had asked, and Alex is immeasurably grateful that she's still talking even before she processes the words. "But I need to put a pause on … this." She gestures around them vaguely, and Alex's relief vanishes with the sudden fear that Kara means the DEO in its entirety.

"You — Kara, what —"

"Don't worry," Kara mutters. "I mean the war. Not, you know, this this."

Alex blinks, taken aback. "You can't just pause a war, Kar. Non's not —"

"He will," Kara sighs. "If he's stopped following our mourning practices, then we're in more trouble than I'd thought. But I can't do this alone."

She holds out her hand, and Alex takes it without thinking, follows Kara to the room that she usually uses when she's staying in the bunker and watches as Kara fiddles with something sitting on the desk. It's only when Non's image flickers into life on the wall, blue-tinged but oddly clear, that Alex realises it must be a video link. She shivers, wondering what Kara had to do to get it set up. Was this something she had done on her own, or with Astra?

"What do you want, child?" Non asks with no preamble. "We could track you, if we wanted." Alex steps further out of what she hopes is the transmitter's field of view.

"Astra is dead," Kara says flatly.

"You're lying," he replies, and dread twists cold and hard in Alex's stomach for a moment before she recognises the reflexive denial for what it is.

"I'm not," Kara insists, and Alex knows her sister doesn't have to fake the desperate sadness in her voice. Even in a sunbed, even away from kryptonite, Astra still isn't healing. Might never heal. "Ha — A DEO agent killed her. By the satellite dishes. Because of your war."

The war had been Astra's, too — was still Astra's, though she had been conflicted about her methods by the time she met Kara, Alex knew she would never stop fighting. _Stupid Kryptonians and their stupid saviour complexes_ , she thinks, and curls her hands into loose fists and tries not to think about the people she would do the exact same things for.

Kara might not see that, might not be a soldier, but she has become a better liar. Safely out of the frame, Alex watches Non soften slightly in acceptance. "Then I would like to see her."

"No," Kara says, before Alex can ruin what little cover she has left jumping in with reasons why that is never, ever going to happen. She raises her chin and in that moment there is nothing of smiling, broken Kara Danvers in her; she is every inch cold, reforged Kara Zor-El. "I am her niece. I will lead her funeral rites, and she will —" Kara stops, draws in a shaky breath, and Alex aches to hold her. "And she will take her place among the stars as she journeys home to Rao. You can take comfort from that."

Non's lips curl up in an unpleasant smile. "I hope you take comfort from that too, Little One," he says, and Kara flinches at the sound of Astra's endearment for her in his voice. "It is the only comfort you will have for a very long time."

Kara holds herself together just long enough for the image to fade to black, and then she slides to the floor, clutching her knees to her chest and looking very, very young.

 

***

 

The rational part of her, Alex the scientist, knows that if — _when_ , she reminds herself, _when_ , the thought of what anything else would do to Kara doesn't bear thinking about — when Astra wakes up, it will be thanks to her biology. Blood flowing inside, not out; bones knit back together with no more jagged edges peeking out; cells regrown; swelling in the brain reduced to let blood and oxygen flow.

But it doesn't stop her from sitting with Astra whenever she can, usually with Kara at her side. Doesn't stop her from drinking herself to dreams, fanciful imaginings where she kisses Astra awake, or kills Non, or flies with Kara, as if those bright spots could somehow speed along Astra's recovery if only she knew she had at least two people who would welcome her when she awoke.

Alex has nightmares, too, no matter how much she drinks. The dreams where she sees Astra's face as she falls are always the worst. She can't shake the memory of I will die before I allow another world end when I could save it, can't help wondering if maybe some small part of Astra was relieved when Alex ran her through with the kryptonite sword. Not like Alex is ever going to know, that's the problem, after all, with stabbing someone in the back.

 _Coward you're a coward you're a coward_ , she reminds herself, and digs her nails into her palms until they bleed, eight perfect half-moons that trickle blood down her wrist and don't hurt nearly as much as the memory of Astra's blood pooling on concrete.

Exactly two weeks after ... That Night (it has capital letters in her head, and even that seems like a pitiful understatement when compared to the cosmic blow she dealt to so many people, and so many relationships, in one split second), she apologises to Astra for the first time.

"I'm sorry, okay?" she says bitterly. She's slumped in one of the DEO's cold hard metal excuses for a chair, two full wine glasses and one mostly-empty bottle perched on the rickety card table she's set up next to Astra's sunbed, some twisted form of an anniversary or a penance or ... she doesn't know anymore. It had been Kara's idea to try to make Astra's room look like a room, rather than a funeral viewing parlour, and Alex had latched on the idea with more enthusiasm than she had been able to muster for anything but sparring in the past few weeks.

Not like the DEO had much in the way of decorating supplies, but Astra's a soldier and a former prisoner, and a part of Alex that she doesn't like to think about too much hopes that the general would find some sort of comfort in the military-reject furniture. Though it's hard to imagine Astra being truly comfortable anywhere.

"I'm sorry I didn't pay enough attention. I'm sorry I fucked up, just like always. I should have told you that at the beginning, so maybe you would know what you were getting yourself into."

Astra doesn't say anything. Of course she doesn't. She's so close to dead that Alex can't hear her breathing, can barely see the rise and fall of her chest. Does this even count as alive?

Alex scoots her chair forwards, kicks her legs back and forth and watches her heels scrape across concrete. It's better than looking at Astra's hands, which have gone so pale during her time in the sunbed that Alex can see every one of her bones and half her veins, a grim topographical map of a country they had once thought they could share.

Astra's hands had nearly crushed her neck, once. But they had also cradled a baby Kara, had pulled Alex back from death, had cradled a photo of the sisters with a delicacy so profound it had kindled a flame of trust in Alex's heart that no friend or colleague or common sense could put out.

Now, Alex thinks she could almost break those hands in half just by laying a single finger on them. She reaches out, thinks better of it. Plucks at a loose thread in her trousers and listens to the air humming through the ventilation shafts above and wishes desperately that getting up was easier so she could go grab one of the beers she's hidden in the secondary kitchen.

"You have to wake up," she whispers, and it's only when she feels the cold of Astra's skin against her fingers that she realises she's reached out to Astra again, holding the other woman's hand and tracing nonsense patterns across it with her thumb. "Please, okay, you have to wake up. For Kara and ..." _For me_ hovers unspoken in her mouth, and she's not sure she's quite selfish enough to say it. Not sure she _deserves_ to say it, since it's her own damn fault Astra's been in a coma under every configuration of sunlamps the DEO can think of instead of anywhere safe, a prison cell or the couch in Kara's apartment or anywhere else in between.

"Anyway. Wake up so I can tell you this for real, okay?"

Maybe Astra squeezes her hand in response. Maybe it's just the liquor.

 

***

 

Outside the DEO's walls, the war begins again with a vengeance after Non's promised two weeks are up. Alex trains hard — too hard, the other agents whisper, and Alex is only pretending to ignore the concerned looks J'onn gives her constantly now — but it's not right, not enough.

"Jesus fucking Christ, Danvers," Juliana Vasquez gasps when she ends up on the floor for the fifth time in the first three minutes of their sparring session. "What is _with_ you these days?"

Alex sighs and reaches out a hand to help her up. "Kara's miserable," she says. " _I'm_ miserable. She's my baby sister, and this — I can't protect her from any of this."

"You're not going to protect anybody if you overtrain," Juliana groans. "Seriously, Alex, what's going on? It's not like you killed Astra or … something …"

She trails off, and Alex realises in horror that something must have show through the sweat and exhaustion on her face. "Oh my God," Juliana says. "You did, didn't you? You stabbed Astra?"

"She's not dead," Alex snaps, like Kara's been saying for weeks. But it's not a denial, and Juliana knows it.

"Take it from someone else with a sibling, Alex, you have to tell her. This is just going to make it worse."

Alex swings, wild and off-balance and it's nothing for Juliana to sidestep. "She doesn't need to lose both of us."

"Trust your fucking sister," Juliana says, and her return kick is true, knocking Alex's knees out from under her. Alex rolls through the landing, using it as an excuse not to dignify that with an answer.

"We'll see," she says when she stands up again. "Come on, Vasquez. Fight me."

She'll think, later, that she deserves to be as thoroughly beaten as she is after that.

 

***

 

Exactly one month and four days after the night by the satellite dishes, Kara shows up to visit with Cat Grant in tow.

"No," Alex says immediately when she meets them at the entrance to the DEO, mind already spinning through a thousand worse-case scenarios. "No, no, no, Kara, no, she cannot be here, what do you think —"

" _Alex_." There's a snap in Kara's voice that she's never heard before, something dark and demanding that makes Alex think she's missed more than just her sister's company the past few months.

Cat rolls her eyes. "Please," she says, and even Alex can tell that she's abjectly failed to feign bored disinterest. "Needless cruelty is my mother's job, Agent Danvers. Your sister and her secrets are safe with me."

One month and four days ago Alex wouldn't have cared, would have told the other woman so to her face and marched her straight back out to her car and personally driven her back to the city. But now she looks at Kara's hand, where her fingers are tangled with a white-knuckled grip in Cat's, thinks about carrying Kara away from General Lane's torture chamber as Astra screamed and about Astra falling, always falling. Maybe it's time someone else tried to keep Kara safe.

So all she says is, "No one's safe anymore," and leads them deeper into the building along a route that passes as few classified things as possible.

The halls are deathly silent as they walk, the only sound the eerily rhythmic tread of their boots against the concrete. Cat had dressed for the desert, if not precisely for the occasion (what does one wear to show up uninvited to a top-secret government facility, Alex wonders. Somehow that had never come up in any of the fashion articles Kara had told her about), and in her fatigues she could almost be just another DEO agent.

Except she's in khaki, not in black, probably the same uniform she wore when she was embedded with a unit if Afghanistan, and every time Alex catches so much as a glimpse of her from the corner of her eye she's reminded again that Cat's a journalist, one whose silence probably only means that she's watching and cataloging and memorising and trying to decide what to write about them.

She smacks her keycard against the reader on an empty training room's doors with more force than strictly necessary and motions Kara and Cat in ahead of her. Neither of them says a word. Alex almost feels guilty about how pleased she is when she notices that Kara's no longer holding Cat's hand.

"So," Alex says, gesturing around the empty room and not quite politely meeting Cat's eyes. "Here's the DEO. And here's you. And here's where you're staying until Kara explains to me what the hell she was thinking bringing you in here."

"Fine by me," Cat says, acquiescing with a speed that immediately makes Alex suspicious. But Cat just carefully arranges herself against the wall, reaches out to prod a hanging punching bag with one knuckle, and seems perfectly content to watch it sway back and forth as Alex grabs Kara's elbow and yanks her sister into the far corner of the room.

"Kara, you _can't_ ," Alex hisses.not caring whether Cat hears. "You can't bring her into -"

"I can," Kara interrupts. It's her Supergirl voice, the one she uses in fights and control rooms and has never once used in a conversation Alex has started with _Kara_ , and it feels like a slice across her throat. "I can because CatCo and this are both my life, and I get to decide when I can't keep them apart anymore."

Alex glances over her shoulder. Cat's studiously examining her manicure, no phone or camera or even notepad in sight. If the good behaviour is an act, it's certainly one that she's committed to.

"I'm not asking you to trust Cat," Kara says. "I'm asking you to trust _me_ , okay? I know how you feel about the DEO, but this is my life too, you know."

Alex hasn't spent more than half her life with Kara to not know what her sister's really saying. "Trust you, trust Cat - it's the same thing, isn't it?"

Kara's silent for a long moment, and Alex stares at the spots of pink high on her cheekbones and wonders how many turning points their relationship can withstand in a month. "It's not an ultimatum like you're making it sound," she finally says. "I want to be free, with the people I care about. I want Cat to help us fight."

It sounds … it sounds _good_ , when Kara puts it like that, sounds like something Alex wants too, and it frightens her. "You know Hank has to sign off on most of this," she reminds her, but she knows her decision has already been made. She wants to give Kara this, wants to see her smile, even before she thinks about the possibilities of a friendly media.

Maybe, she thinks, maybe Cat can even write Astra the story she deserves.

"Obviously," Kara grins, bouncing lightly on the balls of her feet. "Come on. You can even follow us, if it makes you feel better."

Alex thinks about Astra, still sleeping in her room, thinks about the parts of the DEO that even Kara doesn't know that much about. "Take her to Hank," she says. "I have … things to do."

Before Kara can respond she turns on her heel and marches back to Cat. "You know," she says, loud enough for Kara to hear without even trying. "You release anything more than what we let you, anything that could put Kara's life in jeopardy, and I'll put a bullet between your eyes."

Cat meets her gaze without flinching, and for the first time, Alex feels a flicker of respect for the woman in front of her. "If I purposefully put Kara's life in danger, I'll do that before you have a chance, Ms. Danvers."

Alex freezes, struck speechless. "Sure," she says numbly, hardly processing what she's seeing as Kara takes Cat's hand again and the two of them leave. "You … you do that then."

She counts to twenty after the door has closed behind Cat and Kara before following, heading off for a drink and then Astra's room.

*

"When were you going to tell me about Cat?" Alex asks later that night when they're safely tucked under the elaborate blanket fort Kara's been building around the couch, an old _Game of Thrones_ episode that had somehow stuck around on the DVR playing just loud enough that not talking is almost acceptable.

Her sister is uncharacteristically quiet even given that, picking halfheartedly at the label on her ginger ale bottle. She had tried to give one to Alex, but Alex had thought back to seeing the most powerful journalist in the city — arguably the country — in her highly classified office earlier in the day and decided that merited a real drink, filing Kara's hurt look away somewhere with the vague knowledge that she should probably stop coming up with excuses to drink soon.

"Really?" she prompts, nudging Kara's foot with her own. "All this time sharing every detail of our love lives, and I didn't even get a hint before this?" It's not, strictly, true — she had wondered, quite a bit, about Kara's crush on her boss before everything went to hell — and even if it were the distance between them since the night on the rooftop is largely her own doing.

Kara sets the bottle down on the table with slightly too much force, sending ginger ale spilling down the sides and a book flying off the table. "I don't _know_ ," she snaps, and doesn't crack even half a smile as Ygritte echoes _you know nothing, Jon Snow_ , on screen with eerily good timing. "I didn't know there was anything to tell. I still don't know what there is to tell!"

"Anything to..." Alex trails off in disbelief, jabs angrily at the remote control. "Kara, Cat Grant knows you're Supergirl — has known for some time, I expect given that you're already dating, and somehow you, what? Don't care? Told her yourself?" This, like so many of their conversations recently, is rapidly spiraling out of hand.

"We're _not dating_ ," Kara says furiously, voice just a little too loud. She leaves the question of when Cat figured out who she is suspiciously unanswered.

Alex raises a skeptical eyebrow, thinks back to how close they seemed at the DEO and before, times when Kara had defended Cat even when she would have been more than justified in doing the exact opposite. "Really? Because the two of you seemed pretty cozy earlier today."

Kara gives her a long look, and for the first time Alex can see her sister trying to decide how much to tell her. It feels awful, but entirely appropriate at the same time. This is what they are now: sisters whose shared secrets aren't enough to let other secrets be shared. And Alex knows that, worries about media exposure aside, her own secret is so, so much worse for Kara.

"Cat and I," Kara starts. Falters over the words, stares at her hands, fingers twisting impossibly tight in their shared blanket. "Cat and I," she tries again, "we were good for each other, for a while. And we forgot how easy that made it for us to hurt each other."

Astra's face rises unbidden in Alex's mind then. _We're nothing_ , Alex had told her, the first lie she'd ever told her, and though she didn't really think Astra had believed her then she was sure she hadn't imagined the hurt in the other woman's eyes. She'd known Astra for a matter of months, spoken to her only a handful of times and even then almost never about something other than war. Kara had been working with Cat for three years, years of knowing things about Cat's life that no one else did. What sort of power to hurt must that have given them? How did they both manage to use that power better than Alex had used her ability to hurt Astra?

Kara's still staring at her hands, and Alex focuses her attention back on her with difficulty. "We're not dating," she repeats insistently. "There's ... we have too much else to figure out before we decide if that's something we want to try."

And suddenly Alex feels like she's the little sister now, sticking her nose in where it doesn't belong and asking questions she doesn't really need to know the answers to for the sake of scoring some sort of cheap points. "Hey," she says, reaching over to pull Kara into a proper hug. "Hey, look, I'm sorry. I just ... I just worry about you, you know?"

"I know," Kara says. Alex runs a hand through her hair, feels the curve of her smile against her shoulder. "I know, okay?"

She falls asleep like that, and Alex idly drinks her way through the last of the six-pack, unwilling to disturb Kara as long as the DVR keeps autoplaying. She's debating the merits of trying to disentangle herself from Kara over the prospect of trying to doze off on the couch as well, when her phone rings.

She almost doesn't answer it, even when she sees J'onn on the caller ID. If he's calling for something bad, all of National City will know about it soon enough, and if it's something good … it's been so long since she's heard truly good news that she's not sure how to react.

She picks it up on the last ring, before she can lose her nerve. "Danvers," she says, and belatedly hopes that she's not slurring too badly.

"Alex," J'onn says, and her heart nearly stops at the use of her first name. "Is Kara with you?"

"Astra," Alex whispers, already looking for keys. "Kar, Kara, wake up, it's —"

Kara stirs sleepily at her side. "'S going on?" she mutters.

Alex puts her phone on speaker with shaking hands. "We're both here," she says, and in the silence that follows she has time to spin through at least four worst-case scenarios.

"There's no need to panic," J'onn says. "I just wanted you to know at the same time. Astra's awake."

Alex is almost surprised Kara's scream of delight doesn't shatter the window, but she doesn't have time to think about it because Kara's launched herself forward, tackling Alex back onto the cushions and sobbing in relief. Over her babbled she's back she's back she's back Alex can hear J'onn asking, "Is she okay?"

"We're fine," Alex says, voice thick with tears. "We're … it's going to be fine." She believes it, she realises, for the first time. There's so much they have to do, so much she has to say, but Astra's alive, truly alive for the first time in a month.

"She's asking for you two," J'onn says, and Alex is glad she doesn't have to be the one to ask. "You can talk to her tonight if —"

"Yes," Kara interrupts, dragging them both to their feet. "Yes, yes, yes, we are coming over there right now, tell her we'll be right there."

"I need shoes first," the practical part of Alex's brain — the only part still functioning — supplies.

Kara makes a disgruntled noise, tugging on her hand as Alex picks her phone back up. "Not for flying, Alex, c'mon. Balcony."

It's a mark of the month they've had that J'onn says nothing about the prospect of Supergirl flying someone all the way out to the base on a full moon night. All he says is, "We'll be waiting."

Alex hangs up and safely secures her phone as Kara drags her out to the balcony and picks her up in preparation for flight. "We're gonna bring her home," Kara murmurs in wonder. Alex breathes in the night air and fixes her eyes to the sky.

Home. Alex can work with that.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art: not playing by the rules we played the game of loss](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15314961) by [paynesgrey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/paynesgrey/pseuds/paynesgrey)




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